Seventy-five years ago today, “a little squib” contributed decisively to changing American attitudes toward the Soviet Union—our ally during the Second World War—and so to launching the Cold War. That sharp-edged squib was Animal Farm, a 30,000-word satire in the tradition of Aesop’s beast fables. The author who modestly described his own work as such was British writer Eric Blair (1903-50), better known by his pen name, George Orwell, and most famous for his next and last novel, 1984.

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